Rep. Bill Johnson is one of the Republican budget hawks elected to Congress for the first time last fall. He denounced earmarks and promised to cut spending.

That put him on the radar of political reporter Sam Stein of Huffington Post, who recently made a Freedom of Information Act request for communications between first-term House members and federal agencies.

Stein said the correspondence he received "reveals that, in private, GOP lawmakers have pressed for tens of millions of dollars in federal help for their districts, even while decrying federal spending in front of the national press corps." Johnson is the second of 12 lawmakers named in Stein's story.

More from PolitiFact Ohio

On March 8, he co-signed a letter from colleague Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Niles, asking the Department of Transportation for a grant to improve a runway at Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport at a cost of more than $4.3 million. The airport, just north of Youngstown, is in Ryan’s district but also serves Johnson’s, which includes some Youngstown suburbs.

Less than a month later, Stein noted, Johnson said on the House floor, "Our nation is broke. The federal government has maxed out its credit card."

To Stein, that raised the question "of whether it was inconsistent for a lawmaker who has repeatedly deplored government spending to privately request his own slice of the pie."

Stein’s piece caused a stir, getting attention on cable news programs. In light of that story, PolitiFact Ohio decided to check Johnson’s position on earmarks on the Flip-O-Meter. Is the request for specific spending consistent with his previously stated position?

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